


A Night Out

by meguri_aite



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe, Drabble, Gen, M/M, and their horrible aus, horrible exorcists, prompt meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-18
Packaged: 2018-03-08 02:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3192329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meguri_aite/pseuds/meguri_aite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Their meeting started with the sound of finality.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>But it wasn’t the finality of anything out of ordinary. On the opposite, it was the sound of the locks clicking into place as the door of the convenience store slammed shut behind a harried-looking middle-aged shopkeeper, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world for the night.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Night Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lady_peony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_peony/gifts).



> written as prompted by [qserasera](http://qserasera.tumblr.com), who first requested “two strangers locked inside a grocery store at three am together au” for horrible exorcists, and then most graciously contributed to this ridiculous AU with this [sparkly doodle](http://qserasera.tumblr.com/post/108412240014/because-izumisays-wrote-a-beautiful-fic-for-my) \- thank you! :D
> 
> many thanks to [my deer dear](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Himmelreich/pseuds/Himmelreich) for helping me at oh-god-no-o'clock:)

Their meeting started with the sound of finality.

But it wasn’t the finality of anything out of ordinary. On the opposite, it was the sound of the locks clicking into place as the door of the convenience store slammed shut behind a harried-looking middle-aged shopkeeper, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world for the night.

Matoba Seiji hadn’t even had time to lament that it takes a special kind of bad luck to be locked alone in the store just when he had a burning deadline, before he heard an affable voice from behind a giant pyramid of instant ramen.

“Well, I hope they have a decent selection of drinks here. The night is still young, right?”

“It’s six minutes past three,” supplied Seiji automatically, talking in general direction of the wall of Hot Most Delicious Kimchi Ramen, Now On Sale.

"A bit too late for champagne, then. But I doubt the store has it, so not a big loss anyway."

Unhurriedly, a hat appeared, followed closely by a shine of glasses, and then the world’s most obnoxiously sparkly smile where one would naturally expect to see a week-old stubble complementing the hobo hat. 

“Are you seriously suggesting this as a way to, ah, kill the time when our host has been spirited away?” Seiji asked with genuine curiosity.

“I’m only joking, of course,” said the man with absolute insincerity as he shuffled closer to where he presumably hoped to locate the liquor.

“The beer’s most likely in the fridge,” Seiji pointed out helpfully. “And the wines are probably closer to baking supplies.”

In response he was rewarded with a poster version of the sparkly smile, now with extra dazzle. Seiji would have stopped to wonder why the wording of his own thoughts felt somewhat oddly meaningful, but his attention was taken up by the stranger, who had located a bottle of plum sake and was proudly showing it off.

Half an hour later, they would be toasting to each other’s health, comfortably addressing each other by their first name, which Seiji suspected was not his idea in the first place, but had no objections to. It felt good not to be addressed by a customary title, even one that had felt like an indispensable part of him at this point in life.

Fifty-five minutes later, Shuuichi-san would get offended at a random comment about his hat and start loudly arguing that he had exquisite taste in everything, especially accessories, which somehow quickly derailed into him trying to remember on which part of his body he had a tattoo that would be the absolute proof to his statement.

Two hours later, Seiji would try to explain that he was not, in fact, thoroughly inebriated, and the cups of Hot Most Delicious Kimchi Ramen were now scattered all over the floor courtesy of his poor depth perception.

Forty minutes after that, Shuuichi-san would fall asleep on his knee, and Seiji, a frequent insomniac, would sit pondering the mystery of the hat, which was the only thing that was still firmly in same place that it had been three hours ago.

At six in the morning, the door to the supermarket would be opened by a part-time worker, who would have received an early phone call from the store owner asking him to open earlier that day to make sure everything was all right. The storekeeper’s wife would have finally given birth to a healthy baby boy, and as he exhaled with relief at the good news, he would remember having left the shop in a hurry and start worrying.

The part time worker, whom Seiji would later know as Natsume Takashi, would be faced with a compromising sight of a fashionable horror novelist sleeping head to head with a half-naked popular drama star.

Seiji would only become aware of this fact after Natsume Takashi would wake both of them up by pouring cold water on their persons. Apart from the innumerable unpleasant sensations, this would result in the hat being finally dislodged from its position, and Seiji recognizing hatless, wet and cursing Shuiichi-san as the lead actor in the TV adaptation of his novel about young men lured into the bottom of a haunted lake.

The rest of the morning they would both spend trying to convince Natsume with all the dignity two people who woke up on the floor of a convenience store could possibly muster that everything was under control.

Natsume would stay sorely unimpressed, but would offer them tea anyway.


End file.
